of bread and a night’s lodging, as he was desper-
ately hungry and excessively weary. She ex-
pressed great surprise at seeing him, and said
that it was an uncommon thing for a human being
to pass that way; for it was well known that her
husband was an ogre, who devoured human flesh
in preference to all other meats, that he did not
think anything of walking fifty miles to procure
it, and that usually he was abroad all day quest-
ing for it.

This account terrified Jack; nevertheless, he was
too weary and famished to think of proceeding
farther ; besides, he remembered the injunction of
the fairy to avenge his father’s death. He en-
treated the woman to take him in for that night
only, and to lodge him in the oven.

The good woman at length suffered herself to be
persuaded, for she was of a compassionate dis-
position. She gave him plenty to eat and drink
in the kitchen, where a pleasant fire was burning.
Presently the house shook, for the giant was ap-
proaching ; and the woman hastily thrust Jack into
the oven.

Next instant the giant entered, and holding his
nose high in the air, shouted in a voice of thunder:
‘Ha! Ha! I smell fresh meat.’

‘My dear,’ answered his wife, ‘it is only the calf
we killed this morning.’

The ogre was appeased, and called for his meal.
The good woman hastened to satisfy him, and
spread the table and put on it a pie that would
have taken ten men to consume it in ten days.
The ogre finished it at a sitting, and when he
had done he desired his wife to bring him his
crimson and gold hen.

Jack could look through a crevice in the door of
the oven, and he saw that the giant’s wife, after
having removed the supper, brought in an osier
cage, and out of this cage took a hen that had the

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